Ready to Fly

Here is the promised sari photo. From left to right are Gerri (who will travel with me), myself, Romela from Pakistan and Kalpana from Nepal (our fashion consultants). Gerri and I survived the whole day wearing our saris, and learned some tricks to keep them in place. We appreciated all the encouragement from our students, who were very pleased with what we were wearing.

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Thank you for praying for our visas! They were approved, and released yesterday (Thursday), which is a good thing, because the Bangladesh Embassy is closed on Fridays (since it's a Muslim country), and Philippine offices are closed Saturdays and Sundays. So we are feeling relieved to have them in our hands already.

We will fly on Tuesday morning. Don't stop praying!

Getting Ready

Gerri and I leave for Bangladesh in ten days. We have a lot to do to get ready. Of course, there are the clothes. One of my favorite parts of traveling in Asia is all the fun clothes we get to wear! This is a photo of some of our saris.

And the cultural orientation. We sat yesterday morning for a few hours with our three lady students from Bangladesh, asking questions about cultural dos and don'ts. Who knew that our American "thumbs up" sign should NEVER be given in Bangladesh? It's good we found out ahead of time.

And the messages. We plan to give four talks in our short women's conferences in the three cities. So we talked with the ladies about the needs of Bangla Christian women, and what should be included in our talks. It was very helpful.

And the visas. We applied for our visas several days ago at the Bangladesh Embassy in Manila. We have been frustrated by the amount of red tape, additional documents, and more and more requirements. It seems we have submitted everything now, so now we are just praying that the visas will be granted in time.

Back to the clothes. Like in most of South Asia, Bangla women wear both the salwar kameez and the sari. The salwar, which is a long dress-like top worn over loose pants, is so comfortable. I have several of them and I love wearing them. The sari is another story. I also have several of them, and I hate wearing them. It's complicated to put it on and precarious to keep it on! So during our cultural orientation yesterday we decided that on Monday, which is PIM class day, Gerri and I will wear our saris for the whole day. For practice.

Although they rarely wear saris in the Philippines, the Bangla ladies will wear theirs too, I think mostly to encourage us. Then the Nepali and Pakistani and Indian ladies agreed to join us too. So Monday is sari day at PIM. Watch for more photos.

Please pray for us, that we will prepare well, and listen to the voice of our Shepherd as He guides us in our preparation.

My PIM Team

As you know, I wear many hats. Usually I tell you stories about my work in the Student Services Department. But, I am also a PIM teacher. PIM stands for "Partners in Ministry" -- our certificate program to help develop the wives of our degree students. Some of our IGSL women are pursuing masters' degrees themselves, but most of our ladies are in the season of life with young children, where that is not really feasible. So, we started this program more than 15 years ago to help equip the wives for a lifetime of ministry alongside their husbands.

The ladies in the photo with me are Gerri, Michelle and Jan. We form the Leadership Team of PIM, giving direction to the other teachers, trying to help the program run well, and thinking of ways to improve it. (Gerri, seated next to me, is the one who is going with me to Bangladesh.)

I remember when we started with the very first PIM seminar in 1992-- it was called "Christian Motherhood". My kids, who were about 6 and 8 at the time, saw the poster on the ISOT bulletin board. They came running to me, and with great excitement, said, "Mom, Mom! There's going to be a seminar for you! You'll really like it! You can learn more about being a good mom! You should sign up!"

I told them, "Yes, I already know about it; I'm one of the teachers!" Their eyes widened in awe!

They said, "You mean you know more than other moms about how to be a good mom?" Kids can really humble you! I told them I wasn't an expert, but that God said that older moms should help younger moms in this area. They accepted that.

So, all these years later, I am still trying to do that, in the spirit of Titus 2:3-5. The ladies in this photo are all of the teachers in our PIM program. Each of us has about six women we are leading in discipleship groups, and most of us teach classes too. We love what we do!

Bangladesh!

Later this month, I am heading to Bangladesh! This trip has been in the works for many months. Now my plans have been finalized at last, and I am scheduled to leave on January 27. I will be going with Gerri Miller, one of my dear IGSL colleagues. We are going to visit three families of IGSL graduates in three different cities: Dhaka, the capital; Khulna, in the west; and Chittagong, in the east. We expect to stay for ten days. Since I haven't been there yet, these are borrowed photos, but I promise to take pictures when I'm there!

Bangladesh is a very densely populated country. In a moment I am going to tell you the population per square kilometer. But first I will give you some perspective, since you probably don't spend much time thinking about things like population density in your country. The population density in Canada is 3 people per square kilometer. Of course, large parts of Canada are uninhabitable, and those parts are averaged into the total. In the U.S., it's 31 people per square kilometer. That seems reasonable, averaging in the many large cities and the large rural areas too. It was a big shock for us (especially James) when we moved to the Philippines. The population density here is 282 people per square kilometer. Wow -- that's wall to wall people! But how about Bangladesh? It's a country that only has a few large cities; in fact it is 80% rural . . . and the population density is a whopping 1,045 people per square kilometer. This boggles my mind.

While we are there, Gerri and I will speak at a women's seminar in each of the three cities. Our graduates have set up these opportunities for us to minister to church women. But our main objectives are to be an encouragement to our graduates, and to learn about Bangladesh, so that we can minister more wisely to our current students from there. I've learned from our past trips that things often turn out differently than we expect. So, we are trying to be ready for anything!

Please pray that God will give us wisdom as we prepare, and that we will be faithful servants for His glory while we are there. And pray for our husbands who will be left behind in Manila.